Effects of site conditions on earthquake ground motion and their applications in seismic design in loess region

The Loess Plateau is an earthquake prone region of China, where the effects of loess deposit on ground motion were discovered during the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake(Ms8.0) and the 2013 Minxian-Zhangxian earthquake(Ms6.6). The field investigations, observations, and analyses indicated that large number of casualties and tremendous economic losses were caused not only by collapse and damage of houses with poor seismic performance, landslides, but also amplification effects of site conditions, topography and thickness of loess deposit, on ground motion. In this paper, we chose Dazhai Village and Majiagou Village as the typical loess site affected by the two earthquakes for intensity evaluation, borehole exploration, temporary strong motion array, micro tremor survey, and numerical analysis. The aim is to explore the relations between amplification factors and site conditions in terms of topography and thickness of loess deposit. We also developed site amplification factors of ground motion for engineering design consideration at loess sites. The results showed that the amplification effects are more predominant with increase in thickness of loess deposit and slope height. The amplification mayincrease seismic intensity by 1 degree, PGA and predominant period by 2 times, respectively.

Study on the Use of Nationalities Decorative Colors in Modem Packaging Design

In modem packaging design, color, as an element of the intense visual impact, plays a very important role, and also can effectively enhance the effect of commercial packaging. However, uniqueness is necessarily available in the design of packaging according to the increase of consumer demand and the increasingly fierce market competition, while one of the effective ways to improve the effect of packaging design is to make full use of nationalities decorative colors. In this paper, the use of nationalities decorative colors in the modem packaging design is studied.

Ultrathin planar broadband absorber through effective medium design

Ultrathin planar absorbers hold promise in solar energy systems because they can reduce the material, fabrication, and system cost. Here, we present a general strategy of effective medium design to realize ultrathin planar broadband absorbers. The absorber consists of two ultrathin absorbing dielectrics to design an effective absorbing medium, a transparent layer, and metallic substrate. Compared with previous studies, this strategy provides another dimension of freedom to enhance optical absorption; therefore, destructive interference can be realized over a broad spectrum. To demonstrate the power and simplicity of this strategy, we both experimentally and theoretically characterized an absorber with 5-nm-thick Ge, 10-nm-thick Ti, and 50-nm-thick SiO2 films coated on an Ag substrate fabricated using simple deposition methods. Absorptivity higher than 80% was achieved in 15-nm-thick （1/50 of the center wavelength） Ge and Ti films from 400 nm to near 1 btm. As an application example, we experimentally demonstrated that the absorber exhibited a normal solar absorptivity of 0.8 with a normal emittance of 0.1 at 500 ~C, thus demonstrating its potential in solar thermal systems. The effective medium design strategy is general and allows material versatility, suggesting possible applications in real-time optical manipulation using dynamic materials.

Seismic performances of dyke on liquefiable soils

Various field investigations of earthquake disaster cases have confirmed that earthquake-induced liquefaction is a main factor causing significant damage to dyke,research on seismic performances of dyke is thus of great importance.In this paper,seismic responses of dyke on liquefiable soils were investigated by means of dynamic centrifuge model tests and three-dimensional（3D） effective stress analysis method which is based on a multiple shear mechanism model and a liquefaction front.For the prototype scale centrifuge tests,sine wave input motions with peak accelerations 0.806 m/s2,1.790 m/s2 and 3.133 m/s2 of varied amplitudes were adopted to study the seismic performances of dyke on the saturated soil layer foundation with relative density of approximately 30%.Then,corresponding numerical simulations were conducted to investigate the distribution and variations of deformation,acceleration,excess pore-water pressure（EPWP）,and behaviors of shear dilatancy in the dyke and the liquefiable soil foundation.Moreover,detailed discussions and comparisons between numerical simulations and centrifuge tests were also presented.It is concluded that the computed results have a good agreement with the measured results by centrifuge tests.The physical and numerical models both indicate that the dyke hosted on liquefiable soils subjected to earthquake motions has exhibited larger settlement and lateral spread：the stronger the motion is,the larger the dyke deformation is.Compared to soils in the deep ground under the dyke and the free field,the EPWP ratio is much smaller in the shallow liquefiable soil beneath the dyke in spite of large deformation produced.For the same overburden depth soil from free site and the liquefiable foundation beneath dyke,the characteristics of effective stress path and stress-strain relations are different.All these results may be of theoretical and practical significance for seismic design of the dyke on liquefiable soils.

ANALYSIS AND PREDICTION OF INTERFERENCE IN ASSEMBLING CURVED BEVEL GEARS

The phenomena of interference in the course of assembling curved bevel gears are ana. lysed and the corresponding prediction program of interference is established taking KlingInberg bevel gear as an exmple. The factors influencing interferenee are discussed and the coneept ofcritical cutter radius is proposed. Finally, a simplified approximate function between the critical cutter ra- dius and the other factors is derived,and the designing method of avoiding interferenee is provided. The analysis and caiculation are proved to consistent with a case of actual product.

Evaluation of design schemes for urban squares in arid climate cities,Mendoza,Argentina

The design of urban squares in the city of Mendoza,Argentina,is based on aesthetic and landscaping criteria without consider strategies to enhance the benefits that green areas generate on the city's micrometeorological conditions.The paper aims to evaluate different design alternatives with the purpose to determine which proportion and distribution of green and sealed areas contributes to achieve the best conditions in terms of thermal behavior and comfort.ENVI-met software was used to simulate thermal conditions over twenty three scenarios,and COMFA method was employed to determine comfort in the scenarios that show the best thermal behaviour and are representative of current design trends.The results show that the most effective scheme for the memorial squares rehabilitation is the one concentrating 60%of woodlot around a sealed center with an area that does not exceed 20%the square surface.Another effective alternative is the one concentrating 60%of woodlot at the center of the area.These findings highlight the importance of an adequate relation between proportion and distribution of woodlot/sealed areas to improve thermal performance and comfort conditions of open spaces.

Generalised variance functions for longitudinal survey data

In this research, we propose longitudinal generalised variance functions (LGVFs) to produceconvenient estimates of variances by incorporating time effect into modelling. Asymptoticproperties of some certain type of estimators are investigated. Simulation studies and implementation of the proposed methods to Current Population Survey (CPS) data show that LGVFswork well in producing standard error estimates.